John William King should be executed this week as planned, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended Monday with a unanimous vote.

The board voted 7-0 against a 120-day reprieve and 7-0 against commutation, spokesman Raymond Estrada said.

The governor is not able to act without a recommendation from the parole board.

King, 44, is scheduled to die Wednesday in Huntsville for the 1998 death of James Byrd Jr. He is one of three men convicted of capital murder for chaining 49-year-old Byrd to the back of a pickup and dragging him three miles down a logging road in Jasper County.

Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in 2011. Shawn Allen Berry is serving a life sentence and will be eligible for parole in 2038.

The racially motivated hate crime spurred both state and federal legislation that creates harsher penalties for crimes committed on the basis of race, religion, age, gender, disability, national origin or sexual orientation.

Locally, it brought about a nonprofit aimed at preventing other senseless deaths.

"People fear but don't communicate," Louvon Harris, Byrd's sister, told The Enterprise. "Once you stop talking about it, hate will come up at anytime. We don't want another person to have to go through what we went through as a family."

In 1999, Harris founded the Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing. On the 20th anniversary of Byrd's death, the group dedicated a bench in Byrd's honor at the Jasper County Courthouse. Proposed projects include cultural diversity training through seminars, support for victims of hate crimes, and increased public awareness, according to their website.

"A long time ago, a reporter said, 'Don't you want to talk for James since his voice is silent now?' And a lightbulb went off," Harris said. "It was true, and that's when I stepped up more to talk. The foundation is to bring about open dialogue and bring down racial barriers that divide us."

King, whose last round of appeals was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in late October, is set to become the third person put to death in Texas this year.

In late March, the Supreme Court stopped the execution of "Texas Seven" inmate Patrick Murphy on his claim of religious discrimination after he was denied a Buddhist spiritual adviser with him in the death chamber.

Mark Robertson, sentenced to die for the 1989 murder of a friend and his grandmother, was granted a stay three days before the scheduled April 11 execution was carried out.